


Ink Riddles

by starsandgutters



Series: trc tumblr prompts [6]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (as in: Adam reflecting on his and guessing at Ronan's), (kind of; Adam is Thirsty but he's not quite There yet), Character Study, Closeted Character, I think that's enough tags, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Introspection, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Ronan's internalized homophobia is not actually in this, Ronan's on Adam; Adam's on Gansey; Tad's on Adam; etc., Several of them actually, Sexual Orientation, Unrequited Crush, again: applies to many of them, but you should probably assume it plays a part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 00:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14092659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgutters/pseuds/starsandgutters
Summary: Even if Adamknewabout the tattoo, because Gansey had told him the story once after school – Adam had rolled his eyes pointedly, not knowing which was more annoying: that Ronan would get a tattoo supposedly to spite his brother, or that he had spent a small fortune to do that – Adam had neverseenthe tattoo.





	Ink Riddles

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Tumblr](http://starsandgutters.co.vu/post/172222915023) in response to [this post](http://ravensandthings.tumblr.com/post/164175077598):
> 
> "Real talk, how long had Adam been thinking about the tattoo if the first thing he asks Ronan to do after they suck face is strip down so he can look at it."
> 
> The short answer: A Long Ass Time.  
> The long answer: these 3.5k words of pre-canon ramblings I wrote at 3am because I'm a trainwreck and have no chill about these two (or anything else) ever

The first time Adam saw the tattoo, it was completely by accident.

He had only been running with Gansey – had only _known_ Gansey, really – for about a couple weeks, and he was fairly convinced Ronan disliked him with a passion. Or at the very least, Ronan sure seemed to go out of his way to be an asshole to him, which never failed to produce a chastising hiss and mortified look from Gansey. It was alright, though; Adam didn’t mind – or, he did, but he didn’t mind too much. He was good at letting things slide, up to a point; and when that point was passed, when his line was finally crossed, he had no problem being an asshole right back.

It wasn’t even that much of an issue, though, because for the most part, whether they were just hanging out at Monmouth Manufacturing (and _God_ , that _place;_ Adam still couldn’t quite wrap his brain around it) or riding out in the countryside in Gansey’s hideous, glorious Camaro, Ronan seemed to make it a point – a very _pointed_ point, in fact, because everything about Ronan Lynch was pointed and sharp – to have the least possible interaction with Adam.

Adam wasn’t sure if Ronan was just jealous of Gansey making another friend, or if he disliked Adam purely on the grounds of him _being_ _Adam._ He tried not to let it bother him. So what if Ronan didn’t like him? So what if Ronan thought he was annoying or worthless? He was just another entitled dick, like all the uppity guys at school who probably looked at Adam and saw nothing but another lump of trailer trash. Adam didn’t need his approval. He didn’t need _anyone’s_ approval. He had transferred to Aglionby to build a future for himself, not to make friends. Getting to know Gansey had been a complete surprise, a wholly unexpected blessing, and Adam was grateful for it. Having someone like Gansey look twice at someone like him – it was enough; it was _plenty_. What did he care for Ronan Lynch’s opinion?

(Still, he cared _a little_ , and it bothered him to no end.)

The point was, Ronan still had a habit of retreating to his room and playing offensively terrible music most times Adam was over at Monmouth. And because it was fall, whenever they went out to hunt for ley lines, he wore a leather jacket that probably cost ten times as much as Adam’s bike. And at school, of course, he wore the mandatory uniform shirt, though Adam had never seen anyone manage to make it look so disreputable.

So even if Adam _knew_ about the tattoo, because Gansey had told him the story once after school – Adam had rolled his eyes pointedly, not knowing which was more annoying: that Ronan would get a tattoo supposedly to spite his brother, or that he had spent a small fortune to do that – Adam had never _seen_ the tattoo. On occasion, he had managed to glimpse bits and pieces of it, snaking out from under Ronan’s collar when he wrenched his tie loose as if it was choking him: black hooks and vines and what looked like a beak.

Once, Ronan had caught him looking, and met his eyes with a haughty, challenging stare: _Go on. Say something. I fucking dare you. Ask what it is; ask to see it._

Adam had met his stare dead-on, holding it for a few seconds. Then, without breaking eye contact, he’d asked an oblivious Gansey if he would like to revise together for the history test.

Whatever little power game Ronan Lynch was playing, Adam had neither the time nor the energy for it. In truth, he very badly wanted to see the tattoo; mostly, he reasoned, because it was always almost completely hidden and yet _not quite_ , a mystery to unravel, a puzzle to solve, and Adam’s analytical, curious mind was sure weak for a good puzzle. But he’d never begged for anything in his life, and he damn well was not going to ask _Ronan Lynch_ for anything.

It seemed, however, that he was going to get his wish anyway when they ran into each other in the locker room at Aglionby after Phys Ed.

Normally, P. E. was not a class they shared, because Ronan played tennis – _tennis_ , as Adam liked to remind himself with dark amusement whenever he was exasperated with Ronan’s ‘tough guy’ act and needed to privately re-establish, with an internal shake of his head, how much of a ridiculous, pampered rich boy Ronan fundamentally was. But the tennis coach had gotten a minor injury, and all tennis practices had been suspended until further notice, which meant that Ronan had to attend regular P. E. with all the boys who hadn’t bothered to pick a team sport. Among these, for obvious reasons, was Adam: he not only felt he would be out of place in any larger group of Aglionby boys that didn’t include Gansey, but didn’t entirely trust the whole concept of team sports, either. He was used to going it alone. It was bad enough when they had to do group projects in Biology or Spanish, and he ended up having to do all the work anyway, while listening to Jared Worthington or Leroy St. Germain natter on about whatever “sick party” they’d gone to that weekend.

So, this week, Ronan and Adam had found themselves in P. E. together. “Together” was a bit of a stretch, as not much bonding had happened in between the sequences of running laps, push-ups, and jumping jacks the coach had put them through. Impressively, Ronan had managed to glower through the entire thing – whether at the pedestrian exercises, the coach, or the students, Adam was not certain he knew.

After class, Ronan had stayed on the field, messing around with some equipment. Adam had gone to change, but he’d been delayed on his way through the gym by talking to the coach about some extra credit. When he finally got to the changing room, most of the other students had already showered and were getting ready to leave.

“Hurry it up, Parrish, you don’t want to waste any time in that busy schedule of yours!” Tad had teased benevolently, cheeks pink from the shower, before smacking him in the ass with his damp towel. Adam gave him a blank look. He was not at all sure how to interact with someone whose full name was Thaddeus Carruthers, nor was he particularly sure he _wanted_ to.

Once he had stripped down and stepped under the hot spray of the shower, he allowed himself the luxury of standing there for a good long while, until the only two other remaining students left. He didn’t get to indulge in long showers at home, or particularly warm ones, for that matter. He had work later, but not for another hour, and though it would have been wiser to get started on his Algebra homework, this felt infinitely better.

He was so thoroughly enjoying the shower, that he barely registered the sound of the locker room door opening and closing – _slamming_ closed, in fact (and that alone should have told him who it was, really: Ronan slammed most things, most of the time). He swayed on his feet for a moment, unwilling to abandon the warmth, but eventually blinked the water out of his eyes and turned the faucet off. Reaching for his threadbare gym towel, he quickly towelled his hair dry, then wrapped the towel around his hips and turned the corner back into the changing room–

– only to be met with the plain, unobstructed, perfectly clear view of Ronan’s back tattoo in its entirety.

Adam hadn’t meant to suck his breath in, nor had he meant to _stare_ at it – he didn’t want to be _that_ guy, the creep who ogled other boys in the changing room – but it was impossible to stop himself. He had only known Ronan for two weeks or so, and the tattoo had remained hidden the entire time, taunting him with those stark black lines and weird spirals peeking out of Ronan’s shirt whenever Adam happened to sit behind Ronan in class.

Considering Ronan’s unwillingness to be around Adam unless he couldn’t avoid it (Ronan seemed fine leaving him and Gansey to their own devices when they were on his home turf at Monmouth, where he could still harass them with obnoxious EDM if need be, but he’d rather die than let the two of them go on a ley line hunt alone, despite ostensibly having no interest in the matter) this might be the only chance Adam got to look.

So he _looked._

Except he kind of didn’t know _where_ to look, because the tattoo was– it was– well, Adam didn’t know what it was _of_ , but it was definitely _art._ He knew that with a certainty that had nothing to do with his A+ in Art History, and was certainly not rooted in his personal experience with art itself. The black curves dipped and soared into each other, forming intricate designs that both begged the eye to follow, and made it impossible to keep track of the pattern.

Here was a beak, and there was a flower, and nestled in the hollow of Ronan’s shoulder blade was a wing, and that was a knot of thorns in the dip of his back – or was it?

Adam had to keep starting over, following the design from a different beginning point when he lost his thread. It certainly didn’t help matters that Ronan’s back was– _captivating_ , for lack of a better word, all on its own. Adam might scoff at the notion of tennis, and even privately cackle about the prim white shorts he knew Ronan had to wear for it, but there was no denying that it had done very, very good things for Ronan’s muscles. His shoulders were not square and solid like Gansey’s were from rowing, but they were toned and wide and strong, the muscles defined in a way Adam envied. Ronan wasn’t as buff as some of the boys on the wrestling team, either, his torso being more lithe and graceful, as if he hadn’t fully grown into his height yet, but there was a certain – _something_ there, dangerous and powerful and coiled tight, like he could spring into lethal action at any moment. Having witnessed a brief, unpleasant interaction between Ronan and his older brother, Adam knew that to actually be the case.

He swallowed. He was not going to do this, he was not going to watch the slow roll of muscle as Ronan stretched and bent slightly to rummage in his gym bag. He was just not going to do that to Ronan, or to himself. 

Adam had known for a while that he liked looking at boys just as much as girls; he had lain in his tiny bed in the trailer for many a night poking at the fact, dissecting it, tearing it apart until he could look at every single piece of evidence separately and still not refute it. Essentially, he was okay with it. He was okay with the idea, even the word, which he had sometimes turned over in his mind experimentally (bisexuality, bi, _bisexual_ – it sounded like something obscure and fancy and progressive, something that belonged in the big, shining, dustless city he was going to live in one day). He was just not going to _touch_ it for now, content in the knowledge that he had figured it out. Because right after figuring it out, he had started weighing the costs and benefits, and the outcome was predictably grim.

What was the cost of coming out? The students at Aglionby would mock him, the kids in the trailer park would yell slurs at him, his father would try to beat it out of him. His father already tried to beat many things out of him. Adam didn’t think he could take one more.

And what were the benefits? Adam already had so little time and energy to spare. It was enough that his heart sped up when the cute girl at the bike repair shop smiled at him, it was enough that his pulse skipped a beat when the tall, curvy chemistry teacher complimented him on an assignment.

He liked girls, and what little time he could set aside for fancy was already consumed by the idea of kissing one – something he had done a couple of times before, but was very much looking forward to doing again. Anything more was just asking for trouble.

Besides, if he was going to like a boy, it would not be Ronan Lynch, for all that he was savagely handsome, for all that his smile cut like expensive crystal, that his eyes were so intensely blue and his eyelashes so surprisingly long. It would not be Ronan Lynch, who called him _runt_ and _mountain dew_ and _poor boy._ Not when Richard Gansey was standing right there, with his soft chestnut hair and his kind hazel eyes and his lovely voice and a jaw that looked like it was sculpted by some long-dead Renaissance artist.

 _That tattoo,_ though. It was impossible to stop looking. Where did that rose stem end and the Celtic cross begin? Where did that dagger blade turn into a bramble, an ivy leaf, a talon? Adam was sure he could figure it out, if he could just study it a little bit longer, if he could just _trace_ the path of those vines with his fingertip to the hollow of Ronan’s spine–

–and that’s when his brain caught up with itself, and it occurred to him that he had just been thinking about _running his fingers along Ronan’s naked back_ , his face and neck flushing abruptly at the notion.

And that, of course, was when Ronan decided to turn around, jumping a little and spitting out a _motherfucking shit_ when he found Adam staring like some kind of freak, his ears violently, guiltily red, clinging on to his ratty towel with nervous fingers.

“What the hell, Parrish?” he demanded, eyebrows meeting his shaved hairline.

Adam scrambled for words. He knew, _logically_ , that he couldn’t have been standing there for more than five seconds. He knew that Ronan had no way of knowing he’d been examining his tattoo with rapt attention. But he still felt like he was at fault. And, mortifyingly enough, he also felt irrationally robbed because now that Ronan was facing him, Adam couldn’t study the tattoo pattern anymore. He would never know if that twisting whorl of ink was a tree root or a tree branch.

“Sorry,” he said, lamely, his accent making an unwanted appearance to drag out the vowel. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here.”

“Yeah, well, neither was I,” Ronan threw back hotly. “It’s been like, forty minutes since class ended.”

Adam frowned. He was about to say that Ronan had no right to act all outraged, that the locker room wasn’t his private property, and Adam had just as much right to be there as Ronan did, when something about Ronan’s statement – or more probably something about the weirdly vulnerable expression on his face, clicked halfway into place. Ronan looked genuinely taken aback and… _dismayed_ , almost, as if he’d carefully planned something only to have it blow up in his face.

Adam got the distinct feeling that Ronan had been stalling out there in the field on purpose, that he had had no particular interest in throwing around a football but rather was biding his time, waiting for the locker room to be empty. It made no sense. Unlike Adam, Ronan was free to take long, hot showers whenever he desired. And while Ronan may violently dislike most of the students at Aglionby, no one there was foolish enough to mess with Ronan Lynch. _Then why…?_

Adam didn’t know, but just as with the tattoo, he felt like he might figure it out if he looked at it hard enough. There was _something_ there, in the carefully suppressed but still palpable discomfort on Ronan’s face, the way his eyes darted nervously between Adam’s face, his exposed chest, and the place where his hand was gripping the towel tight to keep it from sliding down, settling anywhere but Adam’s eyes, jumping quickly from spot to spot as if he was afraid it might hurt his vision to linger in any one place for too long.

“I decided to take a long shower,” Adam shrugged. He could see the tension crawl from Ronan’s shoulders into his neck like he was preparing to deal or receive a blow, and he could tell that Ronan was working up to making a classist comment and starting a fight, just to dispel the awkwardness, because, as he was rapidly learning, starting a fight was Ronan’s solution to _everything_. Usually Adam could be goaded into going along with it, surprising Gansey and even himself, a lifetime of trying to _just stay out of the way_ apparently thrown to the winds in favour of sparring with Ronan Lynch and his infuriating haughty smirk, but right now he was tired, sore from the workout and a little dazed from the shower, still reeling a little from his earlier train of thought, so he doused the fuse before Ronan could light it.

“Your tattoo is really interesting,” he said quickly, before Ronan had a chance to speak. “The design, I mean,” he added, apparently unable to stop once he’d opened his mouth. “It’s very unusual.” He bit his tongue before he could add _I think it’s really cool,_ partly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to offer up that much admiration, and partly because he had a feeling Ronan would scoff at the word ‘cool’ being used as a genuine compliment.

Ronan frowned, as if he thought there was a chance Adam was mocking him. “I designed it myself,” he said, deadpan, and for a moment Adam was sure Ronan was mocking _him._

“Huh,” he exhaled, stalling for time, targeting a skeptical look at Ronan. Ronan stared back, one eyebrow going up in an arrogant challenge. _So he really did draw it himself._ Adam was filled with a rush of awe, his brain struggling to rearrange his ‘Ronan shithead Lynch’ folder around this new, unexpected information. What a strange thing to know about this boy he was not quite friends with; what a wild and beautiful thing he had created to be etched into his skin.

“Well, I guess now I know what you’re scribbling all the time in class,” Adam heard himself say, still a little dazed. Ronan’s other eyebrow joined its twin in surprise. “I mean, you’re sure as hell not taking any notes.”

There was a tense moment’s pause, then Ronan’s face split in a savage grin, and a small knot of tension in Adam’s chest dissolved. That was the right answer. It was still too early to know for sure, but he had a preliminary hypothesis that Ronan liked it when Adam was an asshole. Adam supposed it could get tiring being the only asshole around, especially if your only friends were impeccable Gansey and timid Noah.

“Fuck off, Parrish.” Ronan tossed at him with badly concealed mirth, extending his middle finger as he disappeared into the showers.

Later, at work, Adam thought idly about how a ‘fuck off’ could sometimes sound like a compliment from Ronan, and how he had pointedly not taken off his shorts in front of Adam, deciding to take them into the showers with him instead. _There is something there,_ he thought to himself, as he worked mindlessly and mechanically to assemble trailer parts, _but what?_

That night, as Adam lay still in his small bed, trying to ignore his parents arguing viciously in the adjacent room and the stench of whiskey on his father’s breath from when he’d yelled at him earlier, he thought again about Ronan’s tattoo. It was the first time he had entertained the idea of Ronan Lynch _making_ something rather than just _breaking_ something, and for some reason, it was absolutely maddening. He couldn’t let go of it. Which was just too bad, he thought sourly, because he was never going to get a chance to look at the tattoo again. He was sure Ronan was going to go right back to avoiding him, possibly even more so than before.

He stared at the dark, peeling ceiling of his room, and imagined he could see the shape of the tattoo in the blank space: a vine, a flower, a cross, a crown, a raven. Adam Parrish liked puzzles, but Ronan Lynch’s tattoo was one he was probably never going to get to solve.

In dreams, Adam still traced it with his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> WELP here we are my dudes. Did I _need_ to include Tad's obnoxious and semi-canon crush on Adam in this? No. But will I ever pass up an opportunity to? Also no.
> 
> If you liked this absolutely extra™️ overreaction to a humorous question, come find me [on tumblr](http://starsandgutters.co.vu/)!!


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